


Keep it Safe

by demon_dream



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Don't Try This At Home, F/M, Innuendo if you squint, Literal power hunger, Love, M/M, Madness, Misinterpretations of good ideas, Obsession, Why a terrified godling should not raise himself, soul eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 16:52:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6666625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demon_dream/pseuds/demon_dream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times Asura felt that flutter beneath his thumb, that pulse, twice he met defiant eyes. Twice he went into the crucible, and this time he's sure he knows what he's doing.<br/>———<br/>Or, a few flashbacks dripping with madness that fit right into those long seconds when Asura has our fair protagonist by the throat. Because an anime can never have too many flashbacks, and Asura doesn't exactly think in a straight line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep it Safe

Ah, he could feel it again.

  


Chittering and stuttering against the bones of his fingers, bones older than the rubble he crouched on fit to break against the fluttering thing trapped between his hands. How familiar was that? Once, twice and again, swallowing souls, swallowing swords, swallowing spiders. Scritch-scratch spiders crawling through his rattling ribcage like all the other bloated bubbles of light. You are what you eat. Lovers betray you, so keep them close. So close.

  


His were very close indeed.

  


Grinning, he let his grip relax just a bit, eyes clouded with blood and bodies disappearing into his unyielding, terrifying strength. He was a God. Who could be freer than a God? Who could be more powerful than a God? Not emotions, not shadows on the wall, not _that look_ like _hers_ and _his_ and—

  


Ooohh, those eyes. He hated eyes, he decided. Yes. Even those black, lightless pits had been eyes, and even hollow sockets judged him, hated him, rejected him. He was rejected. Every time he saw those eyes, all over again he was ripped broken and bleeding magic from the seams of that so-called 'greatness', left crushed against the floor like a tin can, and if the metal screams when you flatten it it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all.

  


Thrust into burning self-awareness he was cold and afraid and helpless, and it didn't matter at all. No, he wasn't a God then. On a technicality, maybe. But not quite, not quite yet, not yet, no... first, the _crucible_. The burning, the bubbling, the meltdown. He had to see the impurities, pick them out before becoming something worthwhile, and his maker certainly wasn't going to do it. He could hardly be blamed for not living up to expectations when he'd been so very _separated_ from the whole. He shaped himself. He burned, he bubbled, and finally he _melted_. Vajra was beloved. Vajra was a walking, talking extension of his tender, throbbing heart. Something needed to be done about that, it needed _fixing_ , nice and tidy tucked away so he wasn't so exposed like a raw nerve beneath a scalpel. Vajra was a part of him, and his proper place was _inside_.

  


No more walking. No more talking. Together. Inside. It was the closest he'd ever come to actual happiness, he thought. And if the other blue bobbles he'd swallowed gave him power, this one gave him _strength_. He liked it. What an odd concept. Like. Had he ever been liked? Or was he tolerated? Handled, like a child?

  


He wasn't a child. Or, he wasn't a child of _that bastard_. On a technicality, maybe. But not really. Never truly. He made sure of that. And since every hypothesis needs multiple tests to become a _law_ , a part of the _natural order_ , he tried it again, and again. It wasn't the same, of course, the other Warlords couldn't really compare to _his Vajra_ , but they would suit until the impossible happened.

  


Burning again, bubbling with enough emotions to swallow the sun in darkness, melting into a sludge of blood and innards and little shards of bone sloshing thickly around inside himself as he pulsed all over like a raw nerve beneath a thousand, a thousand-thousand scalpels shaped like his father's hands, and his world was nothing but the howling kind of laughter that wolves or crows laugh, because he can do no better, because he will never have the moon, because he will never have that one drink of water that would _fix_ him right and proper, tie down this helpless child-fear and wailing terror in the face of the light.

  


He is in the crucible again. Or did he ever leave? No matter, he will be purer for it. Godly. Right. Terrifying, not terrified, because how could it be any worse? He'd been unmade by his maker, after all. Not killed by his father, because they both knew he would never die like this, but as they say... it's the thought that counts.

  


He would never think of him as 'father' again, he decided, laughing and hearing the tinny echo of his voice off of the slick inner walls of his detached dermis. He lit on fire with every breath, but it was just so wonderful, because his maker couldn't kill him then and if this was the bottom then it was all uphill from here, he was a God in his placenta and when he would rebirth himself the world would scream and drown in its own blood. He would be born again without his chain, without his umbilical cord, he would not be rejected because who was there that would reject him? No one. He was alone. But not, of course. He still had plenty of company in his belly. And they could not reject him, either.

  


And then he found another, whose fingers trailed the ghost-paths through his regrown hair that Vajra's had once walked. The impossible happened to him with a sweet, low voice and a body so soft and warm he cried. Starry, shattered eyes with cobwebs of darkness clinging to them, the sticky threads of poison so familiar to his broken mirror mind. He almost forgot himself. He knew she was using him. If that was better or worse, he couldn't tell. He was too busy following his own rules, that his heart should be protected, and that he needed to eat properly to be a strong, healthy God. What, he wondered, would a witch soul do for him?

  


His heart once again in its proper place, inside, and feeling the raw _strength_ he'd only felt once before, his flesh seared and cracked with the force of it until he shattered into something wonderfully strong.

  


And now he was faced with _those eyes_ again, after eight hundred years. Perhaps a different body. Perhaps a different language. But the soul was the same, the eyes of that soul were the same, and hadn't he eaten this one once before? He remembered that, but then his memory was faulty of late. Something about swallowing swords... it didn't matter. Didn't matter at all, everything would be alright soon. He was a God, after all. And he knew how to treat his lovers. He'd practiced!

  


Everything was in its proper place, and... yes, there it was a third time, fluttering beneath his fingers. He smiled at defiant eyes, and leaned a little closer to that desperate flutter beneath his thumb.


End file.
